


Blackened and Burnt

by OldSportSquared



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Angst, M/M, Post Soulless Sam, Season/Series 06, Sharing Body Heat, Sharing a Bed, Showers, Some Sap, Touch-Starved, full body hugs
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-08
Updated: 2020-10-08
Packaged: 2021-03-07 20:14:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,268
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26893528
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/OldSportSquared/pseuds/OldSportSquared
Summary: Ninety minute showers are about the closest Sam gets to feeling warm these days. He has to wonder if Lucifer's preferred torture was ice - but it's not like he'd know with a wall in his head.
Relationships: Dean Winchester/Sam Winchester
Comments: 9
Kudos: 107
Collections: Writing Rainbow Black





	Blackened and Burnt

**Author's Note:**

  * For [roguefaerie](https://archiveofourown.org/users/roguefaerie/gifts).



> Hope you enjoy!

The only thing Sam cares about these days when it comes to motels is the shower. Dean likes to mock him for it, but not too much, like he thinks if he pokes Sam too much in his many raw spots, he'll shatter. Stupid really, if anything tears Sam Winchester apart, it'll be something from inside his own head. He just likes it, all of it, the heat of the shower, even if it's never hot enough, can't be hot enough to really work for him. Likes the way it fills his lungs with steam, ephemeral as the sense of internal warmth is. In this case, Dean had got there first, which is privately in Sam's opinion even better. He mostly argues because Dean expects it, and it's a kindness to keep up a sense of normality between them.

Sam has fallen asleep waiting for him to finish up, and when he wakes it's fully dark, Dean silhouetted in the doorway against the bathroom light, peering into the room. "All yours Sam," he offers, pushes between the beds to sit down and rub his hair dry. Sam feels still half-way asleep, kicks off his clothes, pretends he doesn't feel Dean's eyes boring into his back as he makes his way towards the shower. Dean's never stopped looking at him, that bit hasn't changed. Just the way he looks now, like he thinks Sam will disappear if he takes his eyes off him. Ever the abandonment complex, the mean bit of Sam says, unerringly true and despicably cruel. That part of him, Sam thinks, should be on the other side of the Wall, in there with the eternal flames, but he didn't get a choice about which bits of him had been too damned to save.

The wave of wet heat in the bathroom from Dean's shower has fogged up the mirror, an additional bonus. Cuts down on the chance of actually seeing his eyes. He turns the shower back on and sends a formless thought into the gaping hole in the universe where God should be and isn't, regarding the invention of endless hot water. Dean's left Sam's shampoo in the shower, small mercies, and Sam steps into the spray, eyes open, tilts back his head and lets his mouth fill with water until he feels like he's sodden with it, soaked all over. It's still not hot enough, not real enough, there's a core of ice inside him, that nothing can thaw, heat a bandage not a solution. It feels like a touch, just a little. His own hands don't, he knows them too well, too intimately. 

When Sam comes out again, he's still cold inside. Dean is lounging back on a pillow, face unreadable as he watches the TV, gives Sam a glance. "Thought you'd drowned," he says. "Clean enough yet?"

"Yeah," Sam says. "Sparkly." He doesn't mean to match Dean's dismissiveness, but he can't help it. 

Dean's up on his feet instantly, agitated, stands there like he doesn't even know why he's up, every bit of him tense. He looks like a cat someone's sprayed with water. "Jesus," Dean says, almost helplessly, "you were in there an hour and a half Sam. Even your hair doesn't take that long, what the fuck man?" He hesitates and then says the inevitable. "Is it the wall?"

There's no lie that will satisfy Dean. Dean knows what him jerking off sounds like, the way it sounds when Sam cries, these are things that are explicable, real. tangible. If no lie will do, maybe the truth for once will suffice, a breaking with Winchester tradition. "It was warm," Sam says, perfect honesty. "Felt like I was warm while I was in there. Felt like I was human." 

Dean's left without words. If Sam had known the truth would have this much effect, he'd have broken it out sooner. Sam waits a second and then shrugs, heads for his bed. Dean's still standing there, still looking at him, brings up a hand to drag across his mouth. "Move," Dean says abruptly, and suits his own action to his own words. Raises up the covers and gets in. It's absurd, almost impossible, not enough space in the bed, Dean uncomfortably close, still a little warm from his own shower. 

"What the hell," Sam says, starts to sit up. Dean's hand is hot as a brand on his arm. 

"Lie down Sam," Dean says, and the helplessness is gone, now there was the inevitable Dean Winchester certainty that came from an intent, however bad. Turns to throw his arm around Sam, human heat of him all the way through, from Sam's back to his feet. "Let me," he says, quiet enough that Sam can barely hear him. If he'd said _let me fix this_ Sam might have hit him, but he finished it there. He let Dean tug him down, rearrange him until there was barely air to breathe between them, conscious of the heaviness of Dean's arm over his waist, Dean's breath on his neck, the tangle of their legs. "You remember the last time," Dean says. It's not a question, breaks open the thing Sam thought they'd tacitly agreed to never speak of again.

Sam remembers. One night before hell, the pain of it, the horror, the way he'd held Dean so close, as though Dean was already dead. The way Dean had turned blindly into him, kissed him. The unendurable pain of having something once and never again. Dean had come back, and never with look or word acknowledged it. "Yes," Sam says, nothing more. It still hurts, always will, even if it's nothing like the gaping hole of the past year in his head. 

Sam had assumed inasmuch as he ever let himself consider it, that when Cas had raised Dean from hell, he'd left that bit down there, a fragment on a rack. He'd folded it up so small and tight inside himself, that he could pretend that it didn't hurt anymore, pretend that he had some curious objectivity regarding it, that short little span of time when he'd put the seal on Dean's hell sentence.

Dean strokes his fingers across Sam's side. "When I came back," and always there's the almost inaudible pause, like even after all this time, it trips on his tongue. "Thought I'd brought hell back with me Sammy." It's not enough, no explanation maybe ever will be. But Dean's warm against him, and he's touching Sam like he doesn't even know he's doing it. There's ice still inside him, Dean's touch can't melt that, but the feel of his hands, the warmth of his breath on Sam's skin is bigger, more powerful than it. Dean turns his face into Sam's shoulder, presses his mouth to the little bit of Sam's skin he can find there, halfway to a kiss. Sam turns. It's easier to face away, but easy isn't what they do. Dean still touches, like he knows Sam wants that at least, drags his hand down over Sam's hip, traces the scar on his belly, so faded that Sam hasn't seen it in years, but of course Dean still knows it's there by feel alone. Sam watches Dean do it, feels the pulse of his blood under his skin. When he leans forward, Dean surges in, kisses him, slow and gentle, like it hadn't been the first time. Winds his hand into Sam's hair for a second, drifts down to the nape of his neck, pulls him gently until Sam's fully against him.

"Warm enough?" he asks. Sam doesn't bother replying.


End file.
